Robert Wilkie is seen as President Trump announces his intention to nominate Wilkie to be the next Veterans Affairs secretary on May 18. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)

President Trump’s nominee to head Veterans Affairs has a history of defending neo-Confederate groups and controversial positions on gay rights, revelations that will likely stir intense debate during his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday.

In a profile published by the Washington Post on Tuesday, Trump’s VA pick Robert Wilkie is described as having been “a fixture” at events organized by descendants of Confederate veterans honoring the birthday of the Confederacy’s only president, Jefferson Davis, as recently as 2005. Wilkie was reportedly also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that defends public displays of Confederate symbols.

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Wilkie, who currently serves as the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness, started out his political career as an aide to former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, who condemned Martin Luther King Jr. and once said homosexuals are “weak, morally sick wretches.” After Helms, Wilkie went on to work for Trent Lott, the ex-Senate majority leader who lost his post after defending a segregationist presidential campaign ran by a fellow senator.

Wilkie, 55, has been a vocal defender of preserving Confederate monuments and displaying Confederate symbols — issues that have landed in the national spotlight since deadly violence broke out at a far right rally in Charlottesville, Va., last summer.

“What we are seeing is an attempt in the name of political correctness to erase entire blocks of our history,” Wilkie told the Washington Post in 1993 amid discussions in the Senate over Confederate symbols. “The questions is whether we’re going to wipe out the history of millions of Americans who trace their heritage to the losing side.”

In 1996, Wilkie went after a Democrat running against Helms, accusing him of having “openly courted money from the homosexual community,” according to a PBS transcript from the time.

More recently, Wilkie has spearheaded internal Pentagon efforts to justify Trump’s contentious ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military.

Activists with Confederate flags gather at the Gettysburg National Military Park on July 1 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The U.S. Park Service issued protest permits for three groups, including Sons of Confederate Veterans. (Mark Makela / Getty Images)

The Pentagon downplayed Wilkie’s previous engagements and said he’s no longer a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and has stopped attending events. Wilkie, who is a descendant of Confederate veterans himself, said in a statement, “while I still honor the soldiers in my family, and I am a student of history, the past is the past and I do not live in the past.”

A spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans did not return a request for comment.

Trump tapped Wilkie after his personal physician, Ronny Jackson, dropped out of the running to lead the VA amid damning reports about his drinking on the job, doling out drugs to co-workers and creating a hostile work environment.

Wilkie’s checkered past is likely to come up during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

Chelsea Clinton took serious issue with the revelations.

“Someone who has defended treason against the United States, pines for the days of slavery and advocated for banning our brave transgender troops from serving is not fit to lead the VA,” the daughter of Hillary Clinton tweeted.

Will Fischer, an Iraq War veteran and director of the left-leaning VoteVets advocacy group, echoed that sentiment.

“The confederacy had at its foundation a commitment to preserve a slavocracy and preserve a system that kept people as chattel and believed in racism,” Fischer told the Daily News. “If Robert Wilkie believes that the calls of the Confederacy were just, then how in the world can you expect he will provide benefits for all veterans?”